


The Angel of Eastgate: A Prologue

by amerande



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale POV, Canon Related, Canon Universe, Character Study, Feelings, Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Love, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Questions, Relationship(s), alcohol but only a bit, angst but only a bit, pre-show timeline, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-30 03:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande
Summary: Aziraphale had always clung to the Ineffable Plan, to the knowledge that everything would eventually work together for Good. Until Crowley had influenced him, given him this thirst to know, it had been enough that the Plan existed and that the Almighty knew its every turn. She knew the particulars, and She passed what knowledge was needed unto her closest servants, and eventually Aziraphale’s orders would reach him, and as long as he followed them, everything would be okay.The possibility which Crowley had planted in his mind—that he, the principality Aziraphale, might take actions and not just hope that they were insignificant enough to escape notice (as with The Arrangement) but actually pursue the dictates of his own conscience—was deeply compelling.It was also, of course, entirely heretical.-A look into Aziraphale’s recent past and how it informs his future.





	1. PROLOGUE: 2008 A.D.

**Author's Note:**

> My tremendous and heartfelt thanks to tumblr user letsgomindthestore for their incredible work as the beta for this.

Nobody spoke, in so many words, of the miracles that took place on Eastgate Street.

The street itself was improbable: less than half a mile of asphalt that didn’t even merit painted lines, whose sole purpose was to lead off of 6th Avenue to the only-slightly-longer-than-half-a-mile Hamann Drive, passing a church, a farming equipment store, and some prefabricated homes along its incredibly short way. The fact that Eastgate rated not one but two street signs (one at either end) was somewhat ludicrous—or it would be somewhat ludicrous, if anyone paused to consider it. They didn’t, however, so perhaps it wasn’t ludicrous at all.

There were no gates on Eastgate Street, and while on a micro scale the road might be considered to be East of the small town of Stillwater, Oklahoma, on whose outskirts it sat, on a grander scale it could be considered West of a great many things, including—if one had the patience and ability to travel far enough—the small town of Stillwater, Oklahoma.[i]

There was no Westgate, at least for a good thousand miles or so. Almost nobody who knew of this particular Eastgate knew of that particular Westgate. The likelihood, then, that these were both gates to the same mysterious Something must be deemed to be quite small.[ii]

And yet, despite the myriad factors which cried out that Eastgate Street was as unworthy as could be of any special significance, miracles _did_ seem to happen there, even if nobody spoke of them. Ambulances always showed up in the very nick of time. Buses never came by the stop too early and were in fact reliably _exactly_ as late as the person running up to the stop in an attempt to make it in time. On more than one occasion, a desperate parent walking home and trying to plan out sentences to tell their family about a lost job received a phone call explaining it had all been due to a clerical error and would they ever so kindly be able to report in for work the next day as scheduled? Older teenagers getting out of bad situations would chance upon an envelope with enough cash to get into a proper city—labeled with their name, no less. Lost animal flyers posted on the signs for Eastgate street resulted in the pet being found and returned. Nobody’s hair got stuck in their lipgloss while they were trying to look fancy for their romantic partner.

This is not to say that life for those in the small homes that clustered around the southern end of Eastgate Street, where it ended in a T-junction at Hamman Drive, was miraculously perfect. The residents all had the normal amount (or more) of problems and concerns; they had just benefitted from a slightly higher chance, over the past fifteen years or so, of everything working out for the best. They were all oblivious to this statistical trend, due to the observable negativity bias in humans, a healthy dose of self-deceptive rationalization, and the fact that nobody was really likely to ask their neighbour if they had also happened to notice that whenever they were sure they were short an egg or a cup of flour, they managed to have just as much as they needed for the thing they were making.

So whatever beliefs the human residents of the area may have harbored in private, they said nothing to their friends and neighbours—but if they had, each and every one of them would have been able to point to a moment in their life that they had felt, for lack of a more mundane term, _blessed_ by the miraculous occurrences of Eastgate Street.

None of them, naturally, would have thought to connect those blessings to the long, quiet operation of A. Z. Fell’s Oddities & Whatnots right at the southern end of the street.

* * *

Mr. Fell may have done better business if he had called it an Antiques Shop or Hardware Store; Oddities & Whatnots were not greatly in demand by the residents of Stillwater, Oklahoma, who were a rather straightforward people. As it was, customers passed through his shop only in drips and drabs and did more window-shopping than actual shopping when they came by at all.

Mr. Fell did not mind overmuch.

He was, in point of fact, the principality Aziraphale. Having resided on this Earth since the Very Beginning, Aziraphale had had plenty of time to make a handful of wise (if somewhat unsporting, all things considered) investments and was currently living, totally non-miraculously, off the dividends. He cared not a whit as to the income this business made him—indeed, the vast majority of the goods for sale were things he was just as happy to keep close by, thank you very much. Restocking was a laborious process, and it _had_ taken him quite some time to get everything arranged so prettily. Effort wasted, really, if his inventory moved too quickly. Besides, it felt cozier the longer any given item stayed in its place.[iii]

For fifteen years, he and the Oddities & Whatnots settled into a drowsy routine, marked chiefly by long sessions of dusting and neatening (little more than an excuse to delight in the arrangement of his various wares), endless hours of reading (largely from his own stock), and frequent picnics on the lawn of the nearby church, which he attended most Sundays.

The church did love Aziraphale—or rather, Mr. Fell. They would have tried very hard to love Aziraphale himself had they really known who (and what manner of being) he was, but in all likelihood it would have ended rather awkwardly. Of late Aziraphale had not, in quite a number of beings’ estimation, been all that great of an angel.

So here he was in Stillwater, Oklahoma, providing miracles to people whose deeds would almost certainly never change the course of human history, would not advance the Great Plan in any significant sense, would not ripple out to win tenfold as many souls as he directly touched for a reservation Up There. This suited him just fine. He loved the quiet. He loved staying put. He loved, he reminded himself on occasion, the _absolute dearth_ of demonic activity.[iv]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] This framing is of course an absurdity to humans, but to many of the other inhabitants of reality, the Earth itself is so small that it’s a perfectly reasonable observation.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] Presumably by the same people as would stop to consider whether a street of only half a mile deserves to have two signs dedicated to it.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] Had he the inclination, Aziraphale would likely have found himself right at home in rail transport modelling. Enthusiasts of the hobby were known for their love of having Everything In Its Place and also for Being Not Tremendously Fun At Parties. Right at home.[return to text]
> 
> [iv] Unbeknownst to him, Aziraphale could have settled any number of inter-generational struggles unfolding in Stillwater, Oklahoma, regarding whether or not Dungeons & Dragons and computer games were, in fact, demonic. They were not, although a certain demon-in-residence on Earth had taken credit for them in a memo to his Head Office.[return to text]


	2. CHAPTER 01: 2008 A.D.

Aziraphale was so entrenched in his day-to-day habits that it wasn’t until a customer (if one can be considered a customer if one does not provide any custom, as was the case on this occasion) brought it up that he even knew about the new business which was set to open in the empty building at the north end of Eastgate. Story was, the lady went on to say, it was an out-of-towner doing the opening.

And even equipped with this knowledge, it was a full week later that he wandered far enough beyond his dominion to see the new neighbour for himself. When he finally did make his way up to this shop (still, at this point in time, a shop-to-be), he found the rather ramshackle old Post Office building (the Post Office itself having long, long since moved closer to the heart of town) looking as run-down as ever. A single sheet of letter-sized paper was taped to the door, and it read:

COMING SOON  
JC’S GARDEN CENTER

The sign brought to mind images of lush apple trees, a garden of infinite variety—and luxurious potted plants. Aziraphale felt an uncomfortable flutter in his chest, a tightness in his throat, and dismissed the image. No point in dwelling on such things, really.

If he was being honest with himself (which he was getting better at being, recently, despite a rather impressive track record to the opposite effect), he was tickled by the idea of a new shop in the area. Life plodded along so placidly in Stillwater, Oklahoma, that even now, fifteen years, four months, and seven days into his residency, Aziraphale himself was still referred to as “the newcomer.” The concept of a newer-comer coming along and relegating him to old hat status was supremely satisfying.

* * *

More of his visitors brought him updates on the new business. He listened kindly and attentively (as he always tried to do) as they mentioned this or that change to the old Post Office’s exterior. Windows fixed. Graffiti painted over. Trellises set up on one side and small vines being trained up on them. All this, people mentioned with the air of those long used to observing the comings and goings of everyone around them, with not so much as a glimpse of the proprietor or any contractors.

Someone with a reasonably close acquaintance with Aziraphale’s personal history may have started to suspect something at this point, and Aziraphale was fairly well-informed about his own past.[i]

But no. Fifteen years of complacent American life had wrapped around Aziraphale like one of the lamb’s wool cardigans he could somehow wear comfortably on even the muggiest summer’s day, and he thought only of whether a small plant or two might accent his inventory in a pleasing way.

The good people of Stillwater, Oklahoma, expected a Grand Opening; in fact, they rather felt they were owed one, new businesses cropping up as infrequently as they did. If pressed, not a single resident of Eastgate could have given an answer as to what a Grand Opening might entail,[ii] but one would only, they persisted in feeling, be appropriate.

Reality, of course, has a way of ignoring what anyone feels themselves to be owed. JC’s Garden Center opened at 9:12 in the morning on a Thursday—or at least that’s when the sign on the inside of the glass front door was flipped from CLOSED to OPEN. This was such a lackadaisical manner of announcing oneself to be open for business that the shop did not receive its first customer until 3:47 that afternoon.

This mattered not at all to the owner of JC’s Garden Center and even less to Aziraphale—who, after all, was quite unaware of the whole thing. It wasn’t until that Saturday that Aziraphale bestirred himself to visit the new establishment. He popped his Out To Lunch[iii] sign on the door, locked up his shop, and set off for the store to see if he might not find a plant to sit in his front window. He wondered if they would have a little cactus, or maybe something aromatic.

When Aziraphale arrived at the Garden Center, he discovered that he was far from the only person with the same idea. While the turnout could only be called a crowd with extreme generosity, it was an impressive feat for Stillwater, Oklahoma, and even more so for Eastgate. The three parking spaces in front of the store were full, and the street had a further four cars parked along it. No doubt some elderly resident of the area would complain over their dinner tonight about the abysmal traffic conditions and the lack of respect for other people’s right to the street. No doubt their family would raise their collective eyebrows in feigned interest and nod politely.

Opening the door, Aziraphale found himself nearly face-to-shelf with the Garden Center’s inventory. Whoever had arranged the store’s layout had evidently taken to heart the wisdom of attention-grabbing displays (although they had, perhaps, skipped over authoritative studies regarding the unappealing and off-putting nature of merchandising within fifteen feet of a store entrance). A shelf ran from just a few feet beyond the door, parallel to the wall the door was in, nearly the length of the shop. Following it down and turning the corner, Aziraphale had just an instant to notice that the shop’s arrangement could best be described as labyrinthine—full of long shelves that came up to eye level, all crowded in close to each other and arranged at confusing intersections that left odd gaps of dead space in some places and conjoined multiple aisles in others, through which some fourteen customers were haphazardly wending their ways with confusion and frustration evident on not a few faces—when the world ground to a halt.[iv]

Due to some truly obnoxious standees, Aziraphale could not see the service register, but from the far end of the store, where he assumed it must be, he heard a voice.

A voice as familiar to him as any other—more familiar, in fact. A voice that had kept him company (questioning, quibbling, antagonizing, mocking, _delightful_ company) throughout his long, long time on Earth.

A voice that was currently explaining what sounded like a dizzyingly convoluted returns policy to a customer.

“Listen, mate, it’s not that hard. Non-living things, bring it back by the second Monday after purchase in its original packaging, with a receipt, and you’ll get store credit. Unless it’s a pot or planter in which case there’s a restocking fee. Big things, kind of a pain. You understand. Living things—plants—I don’t take back once they’re out of the container they’re sold in, unless it’s in a _better_ container, in which case there’s still the restocking fee because then I have to figure out what to do with your ruddy pot,” the voice said in an utterly disinterested tone.

Aziraphale turned on his heel and fled the building. Fleeing, in this case, was more of a state of mind than any literal action. As a being of immense dignity, he actually moved at a casual amble. But rest assured: his emotions were very much those of a fleeing man.

* * *

  
The angel Aziraphale sat in his parlour and stared intently at the bottle in front of him. It was low and squat, making one fight through folds and angles of slab-like glass for a glimpse of the ruddy brown liquid it held. He and the bottle sat, unmoving, for moments on end, long enough that they tripped out of the ordinary sort of silence of a man alone with his altogether inanimate possessions and fell directly into the uncomfortable silence of a man seemingly willing a bottle of alcohol to offer him guidance.[v]

Aziraphale was not, by nature, much of a one for drunkenness. This had less to do with the virtue of temperance (which he generally espoused as more of a contractual obligation than anything else) and everything to do with the reasons he enjoyed alcohol, which were two-fold.

One: The way some of it tasted. Vintage wines and delightfully sophisticated liqueurs were not the sorts of drinks that one gulped down or imbibed in vast quantities. They were best appreciated while one still had all of one’s faculties under one’s control.

Two: Crowley. As the Earth’s only other full-time immortal inhabitant, Crowley was the one being around whom Aziraphale could safely drop the entirety (or near enough as makes no difference) of his facade—and with the demon, that seemed to frequently involve more alcohol than any truly mortal frame could withstand. Inebriation simply wouldn’t be the same without him.

Aziraphale had not had much occasion to get roaring drunk in slightly more than fifteen years.

He had a powerful urge, now, to reduce himself to a state distinctly lower than sobriety, to hide from that voice and the possible ramifications of its appearance here in Stillwater, Oklahoma. At the very least, it might better prepare him to face them. That was the sort of thing _this_ type of liquor, the type in the squat bottle, was good for. It was the kind, as luck would have it, which Crowley preferred (having never been as interested in human delicacies as Aziraphale himself was)—a blunt weapon which did its job with efficiency.

He had an equally powerful urge to pack up his antiques, his oddities and whatnots, his fine vintages, and resurface somewhere far away from that voice.

That was, after all, how he’d wound up in Eastgate to begin with. He’d come to escape the echo of Crowley’s voice—his _questions_.

The demon—Fallen angel—Crowley had been asking questions for as long as Aziraphale had known him.[vi]

From the Very Beginning, Crowley had been asking questions which made Aziraphale fret and fidget—_”Didn’t you have a flaming sword? What have you done with it?”_ and “_She can’t mean the kids, too, can She?”_ and _“”Be kind to each other?” Seems like a bit of an overreaction, doesn’t it?”_—questions which often were not, Aziraphale had come to recognize over time, actually directed at himself, but which he nonetheless felt responsible for answering.

Although he hadn’t known it at the time, Aziraphale’s self-exile to Stillwater, Oklahoma, had begun with what was, by all accounts, a fairly innocuous question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] Aziraphale easily rated, in fact, amongst the top three most well-informed people on his own past—if you consider the Almighty Herself as a person, that is.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] That is, aside from a balloon archway, which they would have shamefacedly admitted probably didn’t matter all that much, but at least it was _something_.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] The sign was in beautiful hand-lettered calligraphy, as all his signs were.[return to text]
> 
> [iv] This story dealing with the sorts of beings and phenomena it does, the Narrator feels it incumbent upon them to point out that the world did not _literally grind_ to a halt.[return to text]
> 
> [v] It was never going to work, naturally. As a principality, Aziraphale had a great many powers, but granting sentience and speech to a bottle of bourbon whisky was not among them. This is all for the best—no matter what a drunk man might say about alcohol granting clarity and confidence, this _particular_ bottle held only the capacity for singularly bad advice.[return to text]
> 
> [vi] In fact, Crowley had been asking questions since before Aziraphale had known him, which was rather the whole point.[return to text]


	3. CHAPTER 02: 1992 A.D.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter-long flashback.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued thanks to tumblr user letsgomindthestore for betaing the whole fic. Also to AO3 user synthwave without whom it probably wouldn't exist, who is an incredible friend and champion and also a delightful writer, go read his work.

“Do you know what your General Synod is considering, angel?”

The question snapped Aziraphale out of his reverie. He looked up from his book, and there was Crowley, slouched in the booth-bench across from him and reaching out a hand to pick through his chips.

“Hello, Crowley,” he said. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Synod,” Crowley repeated. “I heard the strangest thoughts while I was over there seeing to—well, never mind about that.”

“Do tell,” Aziraphale said as he marked his place and set aside his book.

“See, I was there rummaging around and right when I had finished, I heard about a proposal to ordain _women_.”

“You...you don’t say.”

“Ah, but I do. Is that one of yours?”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “No, I hadn’t received any instructions related to that. Would you like anything to eat, my dear?”

“Nah,” said Crowley as he shoved a chip into his mouth.

“I’ll have to look into that,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully.

And he did. Some months later, after a few touches of angelic influence and divine enlightenment, Britain’s General Synod passed a vote to allow the ordination of women as priests of the Church of England.

The afternoon of the same day, the archangel Gabriel paid a visit to A. Z. Fell & Co. bookshop in London.

At the very instant he entered the shop, its sole other patron miraculously remembered that he had an errand to attend to and scurried out. The door thudded shut behind him, and Aziraphale looked up. Seeing the archangel, he smiled politely (if somewhat forcedly).

“Ah, Gabriel, good afternoon. To what do I owe the pleasure…?”

“What the fuck, Aziraphale?”

“Beg—beg pardon?” Aziraphale asked, his smile faltering.

“A certain vote came to the Synod today. Our reporters said your stink was all over it,” Gabriel said, striding closer to the register.

“Ohh, yes!” Aziraphale said, uncertainty forgotten. “I received intelligence that it was a topic under discussion, and while I wouldn’t wish to overstate my involvement, I _did_ lean on a few key players.”[i]

“Why?!”

“Well, it seemed rather an uncertain thing at first, and I thought—”

“—_Did_ you think, Aziraphale? Did you think about whether this was part of the Plan? Did you maybe think that we would have told you if Heaven needed your interference?”

Aziraphale blinked at him rapidly. “Do you mean to say—surely we’re not _opposed_ to it?” he asked at length, looking as if he must have somehow misunderstood.[ii]

“I’ve had to pass two exceptions and stifle a schism already—and it’s only been two hours down here!” Gabriel shook two fingers at Aziraphale as he spoke. “This wasn’t in the Plan!”

“Well,” said Aziraphale. He swallowed convulsively once, twice. “Was…was it specifically _not_ in the plan?”

It sounded like the sort of question Crowley would ask. Aziraphale chose not to dig too deeply into what that could imply.

Receiving no answer except a sneer, Aziraphale pressed on.

“I mean we...we couldn’t have especially been counting on the church to _not_ allow for their ordination, could we?” he asked. “I’ve personally been waiting for centuries for them to catch up with the—with the times.”  
Gabriel made a noise of disgust.

“And anyway,” Aziraphale continued, “I’d heard the prayers—young ladies who wanted nothing more than to serve Her more directly, to shed Her light and share Her words.” Those had been difficult prayers to listen to: the yearning, the holy thirst had been what ultimately steeled his resolution.

“Doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said dismissively. “We’re too close to things now for errant angels to muck things up by taking Church matters into their own hands.”

“Too close?”

“_Yes_, too close. Earth’s time is almost up. We can’t risk having any pieces out of place when the board is finally set.”[iii]

“I’m not sure I quite follow,” Aziraphale said faintly. “Surely more people finding their calling in the Church, more people feeling accepted and heard and whole, is to the Glory of God?”

Gabriel cut him off with a gesture. “Whatever,” he said. “Just don’t meddle again.”

With a flash of light, the archangel was gone, leaving Aziraphale to stare blankly at the spot he had vacated. He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, the constriction in his chest, with little success.

Not many days later, Crowley found him again - this time while Aziraphale wandered back and forth across the Southwark Bridge.

“I beg your pardon,” Aziraphale said without looking up as he and the demon bumped shoulders while passing in opposite directions.

“Not at all, angel,” said Crowley, turning to walk alongside him.

“Oh—Crowley.”

They walked the length of the bridge in silence. At the far end from where they had met, they turned back around, and Crowley cleared his throat.

“I haven’t known many angels to brood and pace,” he said with the same disaffected tone as one might use to comment upon the weather.[iv]

“I am not _brooding_,” Aziraphale answered broodily.

“Course you aren’t,” Crowley agreed.

“It’s just,” Aziraphale said after a few more steps, “that Gabriel paid me a visit the other day.”

“Gabriel? Archangel Gabriel? Stick-up-his-righteous-arse Gabriel?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Aziraphale said. “But yes, that Gabriel. Said I’d...I’d rather messed up with the whole ordination business.”

“Ah,” said Crowley. “Not sure I follow.”

“The ordination of women—the General Synod vote. Apparently it ought not have happened.”

“Oughtn’t it have?”

“Not according to Gabriel,” Aziraphale said glumly.

“For all _that’s_ worth.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said,” said Crowley, “For all that’s worth.” He enunciated the sentence carefully.

“And what did you mean?”

“Well, Gabriel’s a wanker. Whole heavenly host, really, if you ask me,” said Crowley.

“He’s not a—and anyway, just what are you trying to say by the _whole_—”

“Bunch of wankers,” Crowley repeated. "Present company excepted, obviously," he added as an afterthought.

“They’re the forces of goodness and righteousness,” Aziraphale said indignantly.

“Oh, yeah. Silly me, forgetting. You’re right. Except for the whole persecution of other faiths, the mistreatment of minorities, the torture therapy for people who love the wrong sorts of other people, except for the turning one of the wealthiest nations in the world into one that doesn’t believe in feeding the hungry, they’re an absolutely delightful lot. Oozing goodness. Righteousness coming right out of their, y’know, everything. Absolute hypocrites.”

“They’re following the plan of the Almighty; they can’t _be_ hypocrites,” Aziraphale said.

“Can’t they?” and Crowley stopped dead in his tracks. “She _invented_ hypocrisy,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

Aziraphale paused and turned to face him, sparing the most fleeting of glances at the rest of the bridge around them—there were only a few other pedestrians, all of whom seemed thoroughly caught up in their own business.

“And how in Heaven’s name did you come to that conclusion,” he asked in a low voice, stepping closer.

The demon was staring at him, teeth bared, and looking incredibly pissed off. “Unconditional love,” spat Crowley, trembling. “Divine forgiveness for _them_ when they had the free _fucking_ will to sin in the first place.” He was breathing fast and deeply, his muscles visibly tensed, and Aziraphale took a reflexive step back—and then closer again.

In all the years of their long acquaintance—all the history of the world, give or take about six days—they’d never spoken directly of how it was they came to be on opposing sides of the Divine Argument. As a matter of expediency, they had left professional quibbles by the wayside. Aziraphale had assumed Crowley apathetic about the whole affair—the impression he’d received was of jaded weariness, like an office worker punching their timecard with no real heart in the job. He’d assumed that Crowley’s Fall had come about when God was on her whole “If you are not with me, you are against me” kick, as a price for staying on the sidelines.

It was only now, seeing the demon seethe before him, that it occurred to Aziraphale that perhaps his disinterested affectation had been hiding an unhealed wound he didn’t trust the angel to see. A hurt that stretched back to the Time before time, a burning pain which had never been salved.

“My—my dear,” Aziraphale stammered as the enormity dawned on him—but Crowley wasn’t done.

“Don’t you see it? She built it into us, the Fall,” he said. “She designed us for fire, and brimstone, and separation, and then She called it a _rebellion_.”

“Well, there _is_ accountability for—” Aziraphale began, rehearsed arguments springing unbidden to his lips.

“—For what? Making the choices we were breathed into being to make?” Crowley demanded, drawing closer to Aziraphale until the two were almost nose-to-nose. “Freedom in a fence, angel—humans always needed two sides to choose from. The Plan always included that apple getting eaten, so it _always_ included someone getting to Eve.” His voice was a ragged thing, at once sibilant and harsh.

“I don’t claim to know, of course, but surely it...I mean, She wouldn’t really...would She?” Aziraphale floundered.  
“Wouldn’t what?” asked Crowley. “The Mother of all Love wouldn’t cast down her children? Yes She damn well would. Didn’t She murder Her true son? But that grace doesn’t cover all sins.”

Aziraphale looked helplessly at the demon, who looked weary, as if all the air had suddenly been let out of him. Crowley stood there, drooping and haggard, his face a rictus of grief.

While Aziraphale had always had a general sense that there might be demons who weren’t precisely thrilled with their lot, it wasn’t something he’d given a great deal of thought to. The idea that Crowley could have Fallen without really, _really_ wanting to was alarming in a way he couldn’t wrap his thoughts all the way around.

“Crowley, I am so sorry,” he said after several heartbeats. “I don’t quite know…”

“My _point_,” Crowley interrupted him to say, “is that maybe you don’t need Archangel Bloody Gabriel’s stamp of approval on this one.”

“I take your meaning, but it still doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, a personal reprimand...That seems quite serious.”

“Doubt it. Classic middle manager who doesn’t know how to trust his reports exercising independent judgement. Doesn’t want to be seen having done nothing if it gets cocked up later on. I wouldn’t sweat it, angel.”

“Oh, that is reassuring,” Aziraphale said, turning this rationalization over in his mind.

“‘Course it is,” Crowley said, and he swung around as if to resume walking.

“Hang on,” Aziraphale said slowly as he followed. “You’re not—you’re not _working your wiles_ on me, are you?”

Crowley whirled around again to look at Aziraphale.

“Tempting me,” Aziraphale went on, “getting me to do your work for you? It was you, after all, who informed me of the ordination matter to begin with.”

“Oh, my professional wiles?” Crowley asked, and for a moment he seemed to relax—then he drew himself up indignantly. “Do my work _for_ me? Angel, I wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of talking you into The Arrangement just to skip it entirely.”[v]

“Wiles indeed,” he said after a moment. He shoved his hands into his pockets.[vi]

“And if this was outside of The Arrangement,” Aziraphale asked, his voice a little shrill. “If you were under orders to cause—trouble? In the ranks? Throw your enemy off our footing?”

Crowley cast him a wounded look. “Angel, get off it, that’s absurd. I heard a thought, seemed like your sort of thing, passed it along. Call it a professional courtesy.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose?”

“Watch your language! I don’t do goodness.”

“That’s precisely the problem: you_ don’t do goodness_.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said from behind gritted teeth, “I’m not trying to—to corrupt you. I just think it’s pretty pathetic to get yourself all wound up over whether a self-righteous prick who doesn’t even care about the humans thinks you’re doing a bad job.”

“I am an angel! I’m meant to do good. It is quite literally in the job description.”

“Would you rather be a good angel or a good person?” Crowley shot back.

Aziraphale sputtered at him.

“Think on it, angel.” Crowley spoke urgently. “My lot’s no good, but you just got told off for chipping away at discrimination in the Church. Is that really the team you want to play on?”

“Well, when you—but you yourself just said—what choice is there?” Aziraphale asked, looking at him helplessly.

“Couldn’t we be on our own team?”

Crowley swallowed, his throat bobbing rapidly. He looked like there was more he’d like to say, but it was all too much for Aziraphale.

He took a step back, away from Crowley, who pulled a hand from his pocket and moved as if to reach out—but stilled at the last moment.

“I don’t believe that’s how it works,” Aziraphale said at some length. He spun around and began walking the other way.

“Angel—” Crowley called after him, but Aziraphale stopped listening.

* * *

Two days later, a sign reading “We regret to inform you that we are temporarily closed” appeared in the front door window of A. Z. Fell & Co. bookshop in Soho. The following day, a sign reading “Now Open for Business” could be found in the brand-new A. Z. Fell’s Oddities & Whatnots. The residents of Stillwater, Oklahoma, were pleasantly surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] It’s not that Aziraphale was bad at reading a room, it’s just that this had felt so self-evidently Good and Right that he couldn’t understand the concept of Gabriel being upset about what he’d done and had therefore charitably chalked the archangel’s manner up to some other frustration.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] He had not.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] It was very much in vogue in Heaven to refer to the end times, the apocalypse, the catastrophe at the end of the world, the coming of the Antichrist, in terms similar to a game of chess. This was especially puzzling as chess had never caught on in Heaven. Nor in Hell, for that matter.[return to text]
> 
> [iv] That is, the sort of tone one would use for everyday weather. It was distinct from the disaffected tone one might use to comment on category five hurricanes.[return to text]
> 
> [v] It was the wrong conversational tack to take. Religious scholars have argued back and forth over the centuries as to whether angels are capable of feeling guilt: that they have a conscience is taken nearly for granted, but most authorities intuit that since angels who have not Fallen have not, to the best of any mortal’s knowledge, ever sinned, they most likely have never felt an emotion similar to guilt or shame. Those authorities had never spoken with an angel, any one of whom could have set the record straight. Angels had, as a matter of fact, developed that particular emotion pretty early on—shortly after the establishment of a pecking order and some angels were put in charge of making sure other angels got their celestial tasks done. Aziraphale put them all to shame, as the saying goes. He took it to a whole new level, especially where The Arrangement was concerned.[return to text]
> 
> [vi] This was something of a feat, as the ultra-low-rise jeans he was bringing into fashion at the time (as a way of fomenting inter-generational discord) left very little space for pockets.[return to text]


	4. CHAPTER 03: 2008 A.D.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We return to the present day to grapple with implications.

The argument haunted Aziraphale. Echoes of Crowley’s voice followed him across the Atlantic. They kept him company in the evenings when he closed the shop (really the front room of his house) and hid alone in his parlour.

The years trudged by as he grappled with everything which had come out of that conversation. He had come, over time, to three conclusions.

The First: Crowley’s endless questions were not intentional temptations; they were the efforts of a wounded son trying to understand his Mother.

While Aziraphale still didn’t know the full details of Crowley’s Fall, it was clearly not due to apathy. His feeling of abandonment, his desire to know more, was too personal. Aziraphale rather suspected that the questions played into it—a Creation questioning the Creator was risky business indeed.

On the balance, this helped to illuminate Crowley’s idea of being on their own team. The raw hurt on the demon’s face as he had spoken of grace and forgiveness ate away at Aziraphale. Time and again, he found himself starting to ask _why_, _how_, anything that could help him make sense of such naked pain, such a sense of betrayal.

The Second: He had badly hurt the one created being in the universe who mattered most to him—and while the admission of that _mattering_ was in and of itself tremendously important, the _hurt_ took up more of his thoughts.

It was difficult for humans, even the ones he really enjoyed, to rise above the level of acquaintance. He felt reasonably certain that might not be the case in Heaven, but down here there simply wasn’t enough time—especially when he had to hide so much of himself away from them. He was on good terms—in a general sense—with most other angels, but that was more in the nature of collegial goodwill. Most of them thought his fascination with the humans and the Earth to be juvenile. Not like Crowley. Crowley, who let himself be dragged to restaurants and symphonies; Crowley, who set up a rendezvous point in a park where Aziraphale could feed ducks; Crowley, who did admittedly take the temptation and discord-fomenting part of his job seriously, but also used his demonic miracles to play odd pranks on humans more often than actually hurting them.[i]

Crowley, who had rescued his precious books during the Blitz. Who had offered to take him anywhere he liked.

And by accusing him of subterfuge, of manipulating Aziraphale towards nefarious deeds, Aziraphale had wounded him deeply.

With time and distance, Aziraphale was able to better understand the demon’s perspective. Crowley had been, in all respects that mattered, kind to him. Had gone out of his way to leave work out of their relationship (except where the mutually beneficial Arrangement was concerned), had swallowed down his rancor for Heaven and the Almighty to (Aziraphale had to assume) keep things from getting awkward, and truly didn’t work his “professional wiles”[ii] on the angel.

He had been as trustworthy as a demon could be, and Aziraphale had repaid that with suspicion.

So much for _goodness_.

The Third: He very much hoped he could be the sort of being Crowley evidently thought him to be.

His heart gave a lurch and his stomach flipped over every time that desperate “our team” flitted through his memory. Crowley saw him as capable of rising above the rank-and-file officiousness of Heaven, of making choices guided by his own sense of rightness.

That wasn’t an entirely new revelation. On more than one occasion over the past six thousand years, Crowley had mentioned the flaming sword incident. Aziraphale had always assumed that was meant to tease and mock him, to remind him of the ignominy of being caught empty-handed—but now he began to suspect that it was something akin to praise, that the demon was reminding him of what he, Crowley, saw as one of Aziraphale’s best deeds.

Had everything since then been due to the fact that Crowley had thought, based on that one act, that he was dealing with a kindred spirit?

Moreover, had he been right?  
  


* * *

  
His stay in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which had begun as a bid for distance to work his way through the questions and feelings Crowley had left him with, had turned into a walking, breathing, daily meditation.

The bookshop in London did not, aside from a very few exceptions, have regulars.[iii] In Eastgate, however, his shop had nothing _but_ regulars. Retirees who stopped by in the afternoons to pass time recounting the comings and goings of the community. Mothers of newborns (then toddlers, then teenagers) who came by on Saturday mornings just to have somewhere to be. Teenagers who sat out front because it was safe and unsupervised.[iv]

And he loved them. They were not his friends, but his love stretched beyond the abstract love he had for all humanity and into the immediate, personal way that comes of knowing someone. He listened to their sorrows, he shared their happiness, and he gave them miracles whenever he could, because it felt joyous to do so.

He knew it was temporary, a sort of drawn-out holiday from which he must needs eventually return. But he allowed himself to sink into the rhythm of life there, to savor its quiet routine, and to bless the lives which passed through his shop however he could.

As the years passed, he came to miss Crowley fiercely, yet still he remained. Going back would require a choice—he could not show up pretending that their last meeting had not happened, could not treat the demon as though nothing had changed. Could not help but beg the opportunity to redress the wrong he had done him, even if he did not know how to begin.

Aziraphale had always clung to the Ineffable Plan, to the knowledge that everything would eventually work together for Good. Until Crowley had influenced him, given him this thirst to _know_, it had been enough that the Plan existed and that the Almighty knew its every turn. She knew the particulars, and She passed what knowledge was needed unto her closest servants, and eventually Aziraphale’s orders would reach him, and as long as he followed them, everything would be okay.

The possibility which Crowley had planted in his mind—that he, the principality Aziraphale, might take actions and not just hope that they were insignificant enough to escape notice (as with The Arrangement) but actually pursue the dictates of his own conscience—was deeply compelling.

It was also, of course, entirely heretical.

Aziraphale trusted, now, that Crowley did not specifically wish to lead Aziraphale to Fall. But there was no such thing as a free agent in the war between Heaven and Hell, was there?

As far as he knew, nobody had ever tried to find out, and while Aziraphale wanted very much to live up to Crowley’s expectations of him, he did not feel that he had it within himself to be the first.[v]

So he had stayed in Stillwater, Oklahoma, far beyond his original plan, because if he never went back, he might never have to choose. Or so he thought, until he heard Crowley’s voice at the garden store.

“Damn it all,” he said to the liquor bottle[vi] at long last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] At least when Aziraphale was around to witness.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] The distinction caught in Aziraphale’s memories for reasons he couldn’t put words to.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] Truthfully, that fact had always suited Aziraphale to a T, as it cut down on the likelihood of people purchasing his wares.[return to text]
> 
> [iv] Or so they wrongly assumed.[return to text]
> 
> [v] As it turns out, he would later prove himself wrong.[return to text]
> 
> [vi] The one from CHAPTER 01. Surely you remember.[return to text]


	5. CHAPTER 04: 2008 A.D.

Sunday came and went with no sign of the demon[i] and Aziraphale allowed himself to wonder if this mightn’t be a coincidence. They’d turned up in the same area by happenstance more than a few times throughout history—indeed, it was those repeated accidental run-ins which had set the stage for their congenial acquaintance. It seemed improbable, though, he had to admit. Eastgate Street was definitively not the site of important events, and it was hard to imagine a place with less appeal to the demon’s inclinations than Stillwater, Oklahoma.[ii]

He tried to puzzle out what circumstances could have possibly brought the demon here, but eventually had to give up as a bad job. The only way he’d get to the answer to this particular question, he admitted at last, was to go talk to him.

On Monday morning, Aziraphale gave himself a rousing pep talk. Fifteen years and change was plenty of time to regroup, he told himself. There was no need to be hiding indefinitely from his...his...his associate.

Shortly after lunch (he couldn’t stand to face a confrontation on an empty stomach) he closed up his shop and made his way back to JC’s Garden Center.

The place was quieter this day with just one other customer, who was already at the register when Aziraphale arrived. He meandered through the maze-like aisles, strangely reluctant, and picked out an indoor plant while he waited on the other customer to make his purchase. There seemed to be some sort of technical malfunction, as Crowley was explaining to the man.

“Nothing for it mate, I’ve got to reboot the computer. Won’t take more than five or eight minutes, it just needs to—” Crowley was saying. He looked up over the customer’s shoulder and gave the slightest of jumps when he noticed the angel. Behind his fashionable sunglasses, his face went very still.

“You know what,” he said in a rush, his sentence veering off in a new direction, “It’s yours.” He picked the basket of items up off the counter and pressed it into the gobsmacked man’s hands.

“But you just said,” the man began.

“Yeah, well, can’t very well punish the customer because my machine’s broken down, eh? Off you hop,” he said, giving the man a very firm pat on the shoulder with one hand and gesturing to the door with the other.

Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat. His feet felt leaden. Crowley watched the customer leave, then turned to face Aziraphale, face inscrutable. The angel held up the small plant he’d found on his way through the store.

“Just this,” he said faintly.

Crowley beckoned him forward and looked at the plant.

“You’ll want this in a window,” he said. “Let it dry between waterings. Thirteen-twenty.”

Aziraphale paid him in cash and awkward silence.

“You’re...new to the area?” he asked tentatively after the transaction was complete and Crowley had handed him the plant and a receipt.

A beat passed.

“Obviousssly,” Crowley drawled.

Aziraphale gathered up every ounce of courage he possessed.[iii] “Might I be neighbourly…” One of Crowley’s eyebrows shot upward and oh, how Aziraphale had missed that. He suspected the demon cheated; surely no merely human face could be so expressive. “...and invite you to tea?” he finished.

Before the last word was wholly out of his mouth, Crowley had snapped twice. The lights were suddenly off and the exit door stood open.

“Love to,” he said casually. “Lead the way.”

* * *

The walk was mercifully short.

Aziraphale hadn’t known what to do with his hands, his eyes, his words—any of himself, really. By the time he was done fretting over how best to pass the trip back to his home, it was over. He ushered Crowley, who seemed oblivious to Aziraphale’s anxious stewing, inside, then stared helplessly at him.

It would have been wise, he reflected, to have a plan.

Crowley looked about the shop.

“Yeah, that’ll do,” he said, jutting his chin out at the wide bay window along the front wall.

“Do?” asked Aziraphale.

“For the lavender,” said Crowley.

“Ah! Yes, I’d somehow quite forgotten…” Aziraphale trailed off, fidgeting with the small potted plant he’d brought back. He turned and set it along the window bench, then looked at it a moment more.

“I believe you offered tea,” Crowley prompted him.

“Right you are,” he said, and led the demon out of the shop proper and into his parlour, where he showed him to a seat on the sofa before beginning tea preparation.

He glanced up occasionally to watch Crowley inspect the parlour (he’d removed his glasses, Aziraphale noticed distantly), but otherwise tried to use the time to gather his wits.

Aziraphale was not frequently at a loss for words, and he found that he liked the sensation not one bit—although, he thought with a frown, it wasn’t as if no words suggested themselves to him, just that he didn’t know which ones to pick, and thus resorted to the safety of inanity (but that well seemed to have run dry already). What, then? Ask after how Crowley had been doing? Mention that he’d been thinking through Crowley’s points from their last talk? Explain that regardless of how Crowley felt about why he was a demon, he was one, and Aziraphale couldn’t stand the thought of helping land him in Hell’s bad graces?

Admit that although he’d put a toe out of line for Crowley in the past, the idea of saying “sod the line” and marching over it entirely was so deeply terrifying to him that he’d come nearly five thousand miles to hide here rather than make a choice?

Worse yet: that the _reason_ he couldn’t make a choice was because what Crowley had suggested felt so right?

No, that clearly wouldn’t do.

“Here you are, my dear,” he said as he walked back to Crowley. He handed him a mug of tea and sat down on the other end of the sofa.

Crowley accepted the tea with a mock toast and slurped at it, watching Aziraphale, who still didn’t know where to begin.

“Y-you’ll have noticed it’s a quiet sort of place,” he said after a dainty sip. “Not at all what you’re used to, I’m afraid.”

“I’ve had some good quiet times, me,” Crowley said. “Spent most of the nine hundreds B.C. napping in a little Roman town in, well, I guess it’d be Luxembourg today. But this...Nahh, not my usual speed. Can’t say it really strikes me as your cup of tea—” here he gestured with the mug in his hand “—either.”[iv]

“Oh, I don’t know. I...I needed some quiet,” Aziraphale said with an apologetic grin. “Some...time.”

“Oh really?” Crowley asked with studied indifference.

“Yes, you see—” and something broke in Aziraphale’s careful restraint, his wall of caution. He sighed gustily.

“You see,” he continued, “I was thinking about what you said, and I needed somewhere to do that.”

“What was wrong with London?”

“You were _in_ London,” said Aziraphale. “Not—not that that’s wrong, of course, just...it’s hard to know quite what I think, sometimes, when you’re around.”

Crowley’s face could have been hewn from stone. He sat there, waiting, and Aziraphale wasn’t even sure that he was breathing. The angel looked away.

“Not b-because of anything you do, of course,” he added. “It’s just that I have trouble—that it’s all so muddled up. And I had been meaning to say, you know, I oughtn’t have said the things I did, I mean about doubting your intentions. It wasn’t right of me, and I’m s—”

Crowley cut him off with a sudden gesture. “Apologies aren’t really my thing,” he said.

“Oh, well, yes, I take your point. But all the same, I feel quite badly a-and you...deserved better of me.” He pulled his eyes up from their inspection of his sofa cushions as he said this, to watch Crowley’s face. It had thawed just slightly from before—just enough that he could catch the merest trace of a wince, and then a nod.

“If you say so,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale nodded in return. He felt better just for having gotten that bit out.

“I spoke unkindly, but I...I know you better than that. It’s all—all such a mess, isn’t it?”

Crowley held his gaze for a moment and he seemed to be working his way up to saying something. Aziraphale recognized the way he scrunched up his eyebrows and clenched and relaxed his jaw from many drunken nights. On such occasions he’d hem and haw and then bring up...well, it was always something._ “The humans have started doing a new thing called marriage. Don’t quite see the point of it myself.” “Did you hear they’ve invented divorce now? Seems like a waste, doesn’t it?” “One of them thought up a ‘telescope,’ they’re looking at the stars up close.” “How come you’ve never grown your hair out?”_

_“Are you staying in London long?”_

Aziraphale wondered why he’d poured tea and not liquor.

The moment—whatever it had been—passed. “Yeah, well,” Crowley said at length. “I suppose it is.”

They drank in quiet for a few moments, Aziraphale fighting against the urge to adjust and readjust his position on the sofa and wondering why the room suddenly didn’t have enough air in it, or else surely he wouldn’t be having so much trouble keeping his breathing even.

“So, um, I must ask,” he said when the stillness had stretched to the breaking point and shouted for something, anything, to mar it, “what...why are you here?”

“Needed a change of scenery,” Crowley deadpanned. Delight bubbled up inside Aziraphale.

“Come now, Crowley, you’re normally a much better liar than that, what with all the practice.”

“Sticks and stones, angel,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale felt sure that if he could just stay in this moment, this affable patter, all their questions could sort themselves out.

“Try again?” he asked.

“Well, I had a couple errands in Spain I thought you might cover, swung by the bookshop—no Aziraphale! Not for some time, it seemed. Figured you’re too good at getting yourself into trouble you can’t miracle your way out of, so someone should check to make sure the Americans hadn’t gotten to you.”

“_Gotten_ to me?”

“Yeah, you know. Bolo ties. Rubbish slang. Depravity. Entrepreneurial spirit.”

“You opened up a shop to save me from _entrepreneurial spirit_?”

“Know thy enemy and all that,” Crowley replied blandly.

This was too much for poor Aziraphale, whose nerves had had to deal with more excitement over the past three days than all the last fifteen years combined. He dissolved into giggles, which were only provoked further when the demon drew himself up with an air of injured dignity.

“I assure you I’m quite safe from American dangers,” he said after he’d recovered himself. “In fact...in fact, I was just thinking that perhaps it was time to go back.”[v]

“Huh. Really? Well, so much for that,” said the demon. He snapped his fingers and a heartbeat later Aziraphale felt a burst of pressure behind his ears as the incredible _fwoosh_ of an explosion went off not far away. He leapt to his feet, but Crowley held out a hand to stop him.

“Must’ve left the gas on,” the demon observed placidly.

“The g—You fiend! What about the people, oh dear me, what if—”

“I’m fairly sure nobody was too close,” Crowley said with what looked suspiciously like a wink.

Aziraphale glared at him as the sound of sirens sprang up in the distance.

“Textbook fire in an abandoned building,” Crowley said persuasively. “It’s good for the fire brigade to get some training, isn’t it? Besides, that building was in a sorry state.”

Aziraphale steadfastly maintained his glower until Crowley rolled his eyes, levered himself up off the sofa, and wandered over to help himself to the whisky.

“It’s been a dull decade and a half, angel, admit it,” he said.

Naturally, Aziraphale did no such thing.

* * *

Some few hours later, Crowley was in the middle of regaling the angel with the tale of his contribution to what he called “the Y2K scare” when the telephone rang.

“One moment, my dear,” Aziraphale said, and he leaned back against the arm of the sofa to pick up the receiver.

Before he could form a greeting, sharp static cracked out from the phone.

“Crowley,” boomed a voice, and it dripped with the chill of the grave.

Aziraphale gave the demon a panicked look and all but threw the phone at him.

Holding the phone at arm’s length, Crowley cleared his throat.

“Yeah?”

The static increased.

“Crowley, the time is drawing near.”

The voice had no active malice, just a dull dread which was somehow infinitely worse. With a pang of discomfort, Aziraphale was reminded of Gabriel’s words._ “Earth’s time is almost up.” _

“And what time would that be, Hastur?”

“Don’t be an idiot, snake,” said the voice over a screech of rending metal that sent a shiver straight down Aziraphale’s soul. “Tomorrow night, at the Chesham cemetery. _Try_ not to fuck it up.”

With a final sparking sound, the static cut out and Crowley dropped the receiver as if he’d been stung. He stared at it with evident distaste before bending over to pick it up.

“You’ll want to exorcise this,” he said, passing it gingerly to the angel.

“Yes, I quite agree,” Aziraphale said without moving to take it. “Either way, I think my residence here has just come to a stop.”

He glanced up and met Crowley’s eyes. The two looked at each other, and the ease and joy of the afternoon felt worlds and aeons removed.

The questions all came back, but Aziraphale found himself unable to do anything but watch as Crowley eventually stood and dusted himself off, looked around the room with a nod that felt like a farewell, and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] This was unsurprising, as Aziraphale had steadfastly refused to leave his home.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] One might be tempted to think of somewhere like the Vatican, but their nightlife is significantly busier and there are, after all, plenty of influential clergyfolk and politicians to corrupt. Besides which, Aziraphale knew that sometimes when he was bored or feeling low, Crowley would amuse himself by moving the scaffolding around on various restoration projects.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] This was quite a lot, actually, even if Aziraphale didn’t feel it at the time.[return to text]
> 
> [iv] He’d come to this conclusion mostly based on the dearth of fine dining options available.[return to text]
> 
> [v] This was not, in strictest technicality, a lie. While he had been laughing there in the parlour and enjoying the way Crowley’s chin wrinkled when he was trying not to smile, Aziraphale had indeed been thinking that maybe his sojourn should come to an end. After all, if Crowley and his questions were to follow him all over Creation anyway, he might as well be with his books. Besides, it had been easy to feel overwhelmed and afraid when he’d had only his doubts for company—much easier to feel able to face them when he could see Crowley and soak in his presence.[return to text]


	6. INTERLOGUE: Saturday, 2019 A.D.

_Mere hours left before the end of the world._

The problem, Aziraphale thought grimly to himself, was that his heart had always outpaced his wits. It had been the case since the beginning of time (as humans measured it) when he’d given away the flaming sword he’d been issued in order to help Eve and Adam make their way in the world, then found himself face to, er, _light_ with God without a good excuse at the ready. Over and over again, his soul leapt to intuitions and connections and left his poor, befuddled intellect behind to try to keep up as best it could. Thus he was constantly feeling wrong-footed and trying to buy time for his mind and mouth to catch up to what his heart had already committed to. When he was lucky, the lag was a matter of moments. Usually, though—well, he rather supposed his record was set at a handful of millennia.

It left him saying rubbish like “I don’t even like you” instead of “I haven’t got his shoe size but here’s everything else” and “I’m going to talk to the Almighty, and the Almighty will sort it out” when he should, upon reflection, have been saying “Yes, wherever you’re headed sounds lovely.”

In the moment, he’d been too afraid of the wrong thing. He’d been afraid that choosing_ our own side_ would put Crowley in greater danger; he ought to have instead been afraid that not letting Crowley know that he was not alone, that Aziraphale had always been on his side, was wasting what might well be their last moments together.

He’d been too busy trying to lay out his arguments to Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon, too afraid of what it might mean if they refused to see reason, to be anything other than slowed down by the encounter.

He’d been too slow thinking through the implications of the Voice of God being hell-bent (as it were) on war: that hesitation had cost him not only a chance to make his case to the Almighty, not only the time he needed to call out to Crowley and set everything straight between them, but it had sent him back here, to Heaven’s lobby—discorporated and quite nearly out of time.

Now, though, as the Quartermaster finished dressing him down for the myriad ways in which he was an unsatisfactory angel, Aziraphale felt that he was finally in sync with himself—heart and mind in perfect agreement. _Get to Crowley, tell him about the Antichrist. Save the world, and never mind what you’re “supposed” to be doing._ He marveled at the feeling of clarity, of complete cohesion and surety.

Where had this _been_ all his existence?

“Where are you going?” the Quartermaster demanded.

Aziraphale continued walking toward where the Earth hung. “How does one navigate?” he asked, as much to himself as the Quartermaster. He reached out toward it.

“Oh well. I’ll figure it out...as I go.”

And he did.

When he’d found Crowley, he’d been searching for a suitable host body to...inhabit.[i] To Aziraphale, who had assumed him to be long gone from this solar system, the demon’s presence was like a beacon calling ships to port. He allowed himself to be drawn in.

It was easier dealing with the reality of his friend’s current condition—well into his second bottle of whisky, ash-smudged and raw-voiced—when incorporeal. So much of his energy was focused on manifesting his presence that he didn’t have any of himself to spare for getting lost in still more questions, for wondering when the demon had begun to call Aziraphale his best friend, for feeling guilt over having played a part, however unwittingly, in having reduced him to such a state. If they pulled this off, there would be plenty of time for all the rest of it; if they didn’t, well, at least Crowley would know that Aziraphale trusted him and had made the effort.

_“Wherever you are, I’ll come to you.”_

Aziraphale wrapped the memory of those words around the core of his being as if they alone could ward off what was about to happen.

He left with a promise to meet Crowley. If he could just find a body, they could work out everything else. At Tadfield.

Together, at the apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] He told himself quite firmly that this was _not_ possession. There was surely some distinction.[return to text]


	7. EPILOGUE: Wednesday, 2019 A.D.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closing notes below the footnotes at the end of the chapter! Enjoy!

_Ten days after the end of the world._

Being an angel—even one of questionable merit, as matters currently stood—Aziraphale generally endeavoured to avoid the pitfalls of pridefulness and keep a level head about his own strengths. Even without thinking too highly of himself, however, he felt it was fair to admit that he was a reasonably clever individual. Yet now, ten days after the end of the world, he found himself faced with a puzzle that he wasn’t certain he was up to the task of solving.

The facts of the matter were these:

One: The apocalypse had come and gone and the world was actually slightly better off for it.[i]

Two: He and Crowley had pulled off one of the most daring cons in the history of, well, everything. They had taken each other’s place for their respective punishments and not only survived but bought themselves a respite, a bit of time where they felt reasonably certain nobody would try to interfere with them.

Three: Crowley hadn’t left the bookshop in nine days except for at Aziraphale’s side.

This last could lead a logical sort of fellow, as Aziraphale considered himself to be, to make certain assumptions. It had taken him three days to cotton on to the idea that maybe this was not a temporary state of affairs due to continued uncertainty regarding the intentions of Heaven or Hell and that maybe, just maybe, this was how Crowley jolly well would’ve been spending his time for the last...Aziraphale thought it best not to consider how many years...if he’d had his druthers.

It wasn’t that Aziraphale minded, of course. Quite the opposite—he was delighted by the whole circumstance.

Still, one didn’t know Crowley for six thousand years without some of the demon’s habits rubbing off on one.

Aziraphale wanted to ask questions.

If one accepted the premise that Crowley, acting of his own accord and more free of external influence than he had been at any time in their long acquaintance, was electing to stay near to him, one was faced with further questions: Why? And how long would Crowley continue to want this to be the case?

And the most daunting question, the one that Aziraphale kept returning to again and again: What could Aziraphale do to ensure that the answer to the previous question was “a very, very long time”?

Most of the problem was that he knew what he _hoped_ would work. He occupied still moments with daydreams of speaking up, of reassuring Crowley that he was welcome for as long as he liked. Of putting a name to the gentle, towering regard he felt, and speaking it into being.

In this, his heart had led—six thousand years ago, as best as he could reckon—and his mind had finally caught up. The only obstacle remaining was courage.

It was all well and good to feel as he felt and to acknowledge it privately. It was even nice to indulge in the idea that Crowley might be of a similar disposition. During the last few days before the apocalypse, after all, they had both skirted around the edges of Certain Admissions.[ii] His breath caught just to think of it.

But, well, that had been the End Of The World. The final moments, speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace kind of thing. Now it was Wednesday, a perfectly ordinary Wednesday with no looming threat to spur dramatic confessions. Besides which, what was he supposed to do? Bring it up in part of normal conversation? Wait until after dinner one night—_would you like any dessert, my dear? and what about my boundless affection?_

Aziraphale had read many books on etiquette and none of them—not a one—covered confessing one’s feelings to one’s uninvited but preeminently welcome houseguest.

Appalling lack, really.

The uninvited but preeminently welcome houseguest’s voice interrupted Aziraphale’s reverie. “Angel, did you hear me?”

“Oh, um, no. Sorry, what?”

Crowley made a show of being disgruntled. “I asked if you’d mind if we went over to mine for a bit. Plants need watering.”

“Not at all, not at all. We can go now, if you’d like.”

No mention of why it was that Crowley was asking for an escort for a trip to his own flat. No need for it.

When they arrived, Aziraphale made himself comfortable (as comfortable as one could be in a throne-like chair which must, he thought, have been chosen for its form rather than function) while Crowley tended to the garden. To his critical ear, it sounded like Crowley’s heart wasn’t really in the scolding he gave the plants. Then again, he hadn’t heard any specific accusations so maybe there hadn’t been any spotted or wilting leaves. He stopped listening eventually and gave himself over to his ruminations once again. Slowly, achingly slowly, he came to the conclusion that he’d need to say something soon or they’d both find some way to talk themselves out of...whatever this was. He owed it to Crowley, he thought, to go out a step on the limb on which he suspected the demon was already standing.

“Alright, they’re sorted for another few days,” Crowley said later as he entered the study. “I’m bringing this one along, though. Need to make sure it doesn’t get lazy.” The last few words were laden with venom and directed at the pot he carried.

“Any other effects you’d like to collect while we’re here?” Aziraphale asked.

“Eh?”

“Clothing or...anything? If you’ll be staying, that is,” Aziraphale said. Since the apocalypse, Crowley had been wearing the same outfit; while he kept it clean and fresh with miracles, Aziraphale assumed he’d be more comfortable with his wardrobe available to him.

Crowley seemed to be having difficulty generating a response.

“I only mean—” Aziraphale said, with a sinking realization that he’d gone and put his foot in it, and whether he felt ready for this conversation or not, it appeared that he’d begun it. “I only mean that you’re quite welcome to make yourself a-at home, you know, at mine, if you’d like. I thought that maybe...maybe your things would help? Help you feel settled, that is. That sort of thing.”

Mercy.

“Oh, well, I’d hate to impose,” Crowley said evasively.[iii]

“Not at all. You…” Aziraphale drew in a deep breath. “You can’t.”

One of Crowley’s eyebrows arched in a silent, eloquent statement of disbelief.

“You’re my friend, Crowley. My best friend—” he winced slightly as the words left his mouth, not because they were untrue but because they were insufficient, “—and I can think of nothing that would suit me so well as having you around.” He paused, searching Crowley’s face and feeling faintly ill.

“It’s n-no Alpha Centauri,” he continued, with a brave attempt at a smile that he hoped would carry all the things he was afraid to come right out and say.

Crowley froze.

“I should have gone with you,” Aziraphale said in barely a whisper.

The demon’s composure broke and he took two hasty steps towards Aziraphale, setting down the plant on his desk without looking at it. His snake eyes were moving rapidly, meeting Aziraphale’s own eyes and then flitting to the rest of his face and then back again.

“_Angel_,” he breathed.

“You once said you didn’t care for apologies,” Aziraphale said. “But I—I’m afraid I owe you one all the same.”

Crowley looked alarmed and opened his mouth as if to speak. Aziraphale held up a finger, close to but not quite touching the demon’s lips.

“I am so, so sorry, love, that it took me until now to say that I’d very much like to spend the rest of all time on _our side_. Wherever that may be.”

Aziraphale was rewarded by the sight of Crowley’s eyes going wide and one corner of his mouth lifting up in the softest of smiles, and _oh_, he would treasure that sight for as long as he existed.

Since his hand was already so conveniently close to the demon’s face, he brought it up to cup his cheek.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked, and Crowley choked out a strangled laugh that warmed Aziraphale all over.

“Yes, you clever, _wonderful_ idiot, yes,” Crowley said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] Very slightly, although the ocean cleanup had been a really remarkable effort on Adam’s part.[return to text]
> 
> [ii] Crowley had, of course, come significantly closer. One might think this would be reassuring for Aziraphale. Alas.[return to text]
> 
> [iii] This was, in fact, a complete and utter lie. Crowley _loved_ to impose. He especially loved to impose on Aziraphale. [return to text]
> 
> * * *
> 
> Huge thanks once again to my beta readers, tumblr user letsgomindthestore and AO3 user [synthwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/synthwave/pseuds/synthwave). And huge thanks to you for reading this!
> 
> This fic really grew chapter-by-chapter. It started from me seeing a place called Eastgate and thinking it'd be cute if Aziraphale had kept "Guardian of the Eastern Gate" as part of his job identity, so I wondered what sort of things the Guardian of Eastgate would do. Then I wondered how he would have gotten there, so I added a second chapter to look at what would have landed him in such an unlikely place. _Then_, naturally, I had to get him back to the canon timeline. It wasn't until the whole thing was written that it occurred to me I could add the Interlogue and Epilogue and actually finish off the arc of Aziraphale's Realizations. 
> 
> It's been fun. I appreciate you coming along for the ride.


End file.
